stevea

I have an X50V that will no longer response to screen taps.

Here is how the last couple of days went:

1. We had a wicked bad storm here in Maine yesterday.
2. I shut down my home pc in the morning but put the Axim in its cradle to charge before I left for work, as the juice was quite low.
3. When I came home from work and removed the Axim from the cradle, the screen was on with a calendar reminder on it.
4. I tapped to dismiss, but it would not respond.
5. After a bunch of soft resets with no response, I decided to give it a hard reset.
6. After the hard reset it is prompting to align the screen, but doesn't respond to taps
7. Hard buttons still work (wifi on, calendar, etc.)

I should point out that the storms included hard rains, and occasional brownouts, and possibly a surge. No other electronics in my home seem to have been affected, though.

Any ideas?

bigdave240

Although some of your buttons seem to be working, have you checked the lock switch? If that isn't it then make sure that your screen protector isn't touching the screen anywhere, remove it if you can. Also try sliding a business card under the edge of the screen and run it around to clean any dust out.

stevea

Tried the switch, not locked.

Pulled off the screen protector, did the business card thing - still no go.

One thing I noticed. If I leave the Axim on and sitting on a table, the backlight will go dim after a while. The backlight WILL come back on with a tap.

Could this be a software problem?

bigtsr

No the backlight is a setting that's standard on Ax.
Have you tried the self diagnostic routine yet?

bigdave240

I think I would try a hard reset again. Just to be sure you are doing it right, hold down power button and at the same time press in the reset button on the back then hit the appropriate hardare button on the front (the second from the left) to 'restore factory default' settings.

stevea

The self diagnostic is record button/power/reset simultaneously, right? When I do that I get the hard reset dialog. Is that an X51v only function?

And yep, I've done the hard reset routine numerous times. It ends up at the "windows mobile" window, prompting for a screen tap, but the tap does nothing. Pressing the navigator button at this point takes you to align screen, but once again this doesn't respond to taps.

The only thing non-standard about my Axim is an extended battery. Would this make a difference?

I'm also confused about a tap waking up the backlight. Doesn't this go through the BIOS as well?

I should add that this is a refurbed replacement unit that Dell sent me when my original's digitizer crapped out. I guess I should have gone for the double super extended warranty ;)

floatinaffro

for self diagnostic mode press rec/power/reset simultaneously, but when you release reset keep holding rec/power until self diagnostic screen appears

stevea

Originally Posted by floatinaffro

for self diagnostic mode press rec/power/reset simultaneously, but when you release reset keep holding rec/power until self diagnostic screen appears

Ah, I missed that last detail. Thanks!

The diagnostic ran until the sound Playback Confirm. I could not tap the YES button to close that dialog box, and there doesn't appear to be any other way to do that without tapping the screen.

So, I'm back to square one.

bigdave240

I wonder if the ribbon cable has started to come loose. Somewhere on this site is instructions to re-seat that cable. I will look for it but try doing a search for ribbon cable and see if you can find it too.

stevea

Okay, I've had some weird stuff happen with electronics in my time, but this takes the cake.

Yesterday I put my axim on the cradle to charge, since I've been messing around with it for 4 days or so.

A while later I took it off the cradle, for snicks tapped on the screen, and it works. The first time the screen alignment app would just cycle through, but I gave it a soft reboot, aligned the screen and all was good.

Now it's 24 hours later, I reloaded my software and it's still working. So it seems it spontaneously fixed itself, which I know isn't terribly logical but there you go.

Thanks to everybody here who offered help.

bigdave240

It is a VEERRRYYY smart box, lol. Hope it keeps working for you.